The present invention, in some embodiments thereof, relates to three-dimensional modeling from single photographs and, more particularly but not exclusively to modeling of manmade objects with straightforward geometry.
The creation and modeling of 3D objects has always been a difficult task even for professionals. First, a mental idea of what the model should look like needs to be formed. This conceptual stage requires creativity and inspiration. Then, the idea needs to be implemented by a series of actions using various geometric modeling tools. These steps take time, demand very high proficiency, and a fair amount of skill. By modeling objects from existing photographs one can first alleviate the mental stage. Second, it allows much simpler modeling that can also borrow textures from the image. This forms at least an initial base model that can later be edited and refined. In addition, such abilities can be utilized for manipulating the images themselves using 3D. An example of a suitable object is shown in FIG. 1, in which the left image shows the object, and the right image shows the object after minor rotation. The result is to leave a black hole in the image.
Extracting three dimensional models from a single photo is still a long way from realization at the current state of technology, as it involves numerous complex tasks: the target object must be separated from its background, and its 3D pose, shape and structure should be recognized from its projection. These tasks are difficult since they require some degree of semantically understanding the object. To alleviate this problem, complex 3D models can be partitioned into simpler parts, but identifying object parts also requires semantic understanding and is difficult to perform automatically. Moreover, once decomposing a 3D shape to parts, the relations between these parts should also be understood and maintained in the final composition.